


Birthday

by morganya



Category: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-26
Updated: 2005-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bite-sized little ficlet. Carson can't make up his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday

The hotel is in the middle of a facelift. When Carson checked in, the manager'd apologized with a kind of diffident half-heartedness, knowing it was too late for them to go anywhere else.

They're remodeling in bits and pieces, it looks like. There are chairs stacked in the hallways, wooden dining room chairs with lions carved into the handrests threatening to topple over onto passerby. A persistant cloying smell of paint and dust permeates everything.

It wasn't exactly the grand 'Welcome to London' gesture that Carson'd been hoping for. But they really only came back to the hotel to change clothes and maybe try to sleep, anyway, so it didn't really matter.

"Tell me what you want for your birthday," Thom says. He lies on the bed in Carson's hotel room, tossing an apple that he nabbed from the minibar at the ceiling. Two minutes earlier, he'd taken one bite out of the apple and pronounced it lacking. Carson can see the teeth marks around the red skin, the flesh pale and mealy. Carson looks back at the window.

"A pony."

"Carson, you have ponies already."

"You can never have too many. Like dinner plates, or Louis bags."

It's just past six, and it's already dark. This is the thing, Carson realizes; London days in late fall only last about three hours, weak sunshine barely touching the ground, and then the sky turns orange and then dark blue without even the benefit of a sunset. The only light comes from the shops and restaurants outside their hotel.

"They got it backwards, don't you think?" Carson says. "London in November, Texas in August." He lights a cigarette. The stores sell cigarettes in half-packs here, slim square packets barely bigger than a lipstick case. He looks back at Thom. "How do you feel about Mozambique in February?"

"How about you stop stalling, Carson?" Thom says.

If Thom really wanted to he could pick up and just lose himself in some other place without even blinking. It's all ordinary to him - the dark, salty Marmite, the Indian restaurants that run two-deep along narrow streets, even the heavy, almost coal-colored air of traffic. Thom doesn't have the tourist instinct; Thom is always a resident, wherever he is.

Thom is his age. Thom is six months older than he is. Thom doesn't seem to care about that.

Carson flicks the cigarette out of the window and eyes his hotel room. His suitcases are lying under the bed. The closets, massive as they are, couldn't handle the influx of couture; he's draped shirts over lampshades, trousers on the back of the bathroom door, coats on top of the overly dainty bureau. Thom puts the apple on the bedside table. His feet are bare. One knee is raised.

"No more clothes," Thom says. "I'll get you, like, one of those PDAs. A nice one this time. Instead of your pitiful little crappy one."

"I was always fond of Etch-a-Sketches."

"C'mon, Carson."

"Hmm." Carson puts one finger against his jaw, feeling the hinge of bone. "What do I want, what do I want?"

Outside the window, there's a chorus of honking from the street. It almost sounds like New York for a second.

He gets back onto the bed, kicks the sheets aside to settle himself against Thom's solid, warm weight. "Oh, I don't know," he says finally. "I'm tired of guessing."


End file.
